Professor: I weep for every teenager of the early ’90s. Great time to be alive but a sucktastic time to be a kid.

Filip: That’s what pisses me off most about the Nightmare sequels. They all know how to open up strong but only 1, 3 and 7 managed to pull off a worthwhile finish. I crapped on John Smith’s little dream prologue but, damnit, I can see that whole sequence looking awesome on paper. But I can’t see anyone (other than screenwriter Michael De Luca) thinking “Freddy’s Long Lost Daughter finally kills him for realz this time” was a good way to end the franchise. No wonder everyone immediately howled for more.

Menace: Hell, I like parts of Final Friday too. At least it took a stab (HA!) at building up its home universe, rather than tearing it all down for the sake of a few scenes that are more comical than creepy. (“In Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Three…Freddy sailed across the sea!”) The FBI, bounty hunters, representatives of the national media, and a New Meat cast built from a diner’s worth of “ordinary” Crystal Lake citizens all help to locate the series various horrible happenings in something that might actually resemble our world. Thanks to budget constraints, far too many 80s Slashers look like they take place in some absurd hyperworld where the only people over 30 are skeptical members of local law enforcement, grown tired of “those damn kids.”